Kim Wilde: "Child Come Away"

14 October 1982

"Add Kim's strong vocal performance plus a piccolo-headed arrangement that nudges into the realms of folk-rock and you have a Rak track that will ensure standing room only throughout Kim's current tour. Outstanding."

— Fred Dellar

A little girl is growing up in a small town. Everything about her life is normal: she goes to school, plays with her friends, argues with her brothers and sisters and refuses to eat anything with onions in it. She spends her pocket money on sweets and is disappointed that her parents still won't relent and get her a puppy. Then she learns about the abduction of a girl close to her age and her world is turned upside down.

"Child Come Away" is a song about two girls: the one who gets snatched and left for dead and the one who is privy to the unraveling of everything around her. Innocence ends up being yanked away from both. Obviously the former is put through so much more but the lingering affects are left as a burden on the former: not knowing quite what happened (much less how or why), learning little snippets of detail but being denied the full story by parents and a town that doesn't want to discuss it, living in fear that she could be next. Fred Dellar mentions a "town filled with terror" but I suspect there's more to it than that. The community is in denial as to what's been going on — or perhaps it was somehow even complicit in the crime.

That the Wilde family was able to come up with this gripping four-minute thriller is absolutely remarkable. Having already trotted out a pair of sorrowful yet superb singles with "Cambodia" and "View from a Bridge", they were well positioned to deliver yet another tragic piece and "Child Come Away" is their zenith. Kim seems to have toned down the vocal frostiness that worked such a treat on her early records but which wasn't appropriate for this type of song, leaving room for a sweetness that captures the childlike wonder and confusion going on. I don't know if I agree with Dellar that the "piccolo-headed arrangement" moves the song into the "realms of folk-rock" but it is effective nonetheless. I have to wonder if it's intended as a Pied Piper-esque tool to symbolise a child being lured away, while other children are being shuffled off to the side and told to go and play and stop asking so many bloody questions.

It's as a piece of writing, however, that "Child Come Away" truly shines. The lack of clarity in the story may seem strange at first but that's precisely the point. What exactly happened to this girl in the sand? What kind of appalling state was she left in that everyone in town — including the judge at the trial — turns away from her now? Has she been cast aside by the community as much as her captor/torturer ("I saw her face in the back of the car / As they were speeding out of this town")? We aren't to know, just as the other young girl in this song isn't to know. And we can look at this situation and gasp the heartlessness of the townsfolk but that's how close-knit communities often deal with these situations. Had it been a bigger hit it could easily have gone on to be used as the theme for the David Tennant-Jodie Whittaker mystery-thriller TV series Broadchurch.

So, all that said, how did it fail to catch on, falling short of the Top 40? Being her third single on the trot dealing with dark subject matter may have turned people off, especially DJs who were content around this time to spin sunny reggae-pop by the likes of Musical Youth, Culture Club and Eddy Grant instead. (Hopefully it did indeed manage to grip audiences during Wilde's tour; I like to think that she still occasionally floors her fans with it at shows to this day. If I ever get the chance to see her I'll holler in delight if she happens to dust this one off) In retrospect, it's a shame it wasn't released as a double A-side with its jauntier — though still appropriately angsty — flip "Just Another Guy": come for the whiplash pop-rock, stay for the searing devastation.

The Wilde trio of Kim, Marty and Ricki had quietly become one of the most formidable ensembles in early eighties' UK pop. Five Top 20 hits and a pair of well-received albums showed that they were onto something. Yet, this remarkable sixth single sputtered. Looking to change things up, they would hit upon a finger-clicking, toe-tapping jazz number that poked fun at Kim's reputation as a bombshell but long term this led her in the direction of uninspired and forgettable dance-pop. She would enjoy a commercial and critical renaissance by decade's end but those brilliant narrative songs had been sacrificed. Too bad that the Wildes didn't keep it going and that the public didn't appreciate them more.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Philip Lynott: "Old Town"

No doubt old school rock 'n' rollers hated the ex-Thin Lizzy leader going by the name of 'Philip' and had this record written off even before giving it a listen. Granted, catchy pub rock in the spirit of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe and B.A. Robertson wasn't the most original path Phil Lynott could have taken to revive his fortunes but it's a bouncy effort and his Ferry-esque vocals go down surprisingly well. He even manages to imitate Billy Joel pretty well. An effortless stab at "aiming for a bit of class" as Dellar says which only makes me admire Philip Lynott even more than I already did. No mere boozy Irish rocker, the man could stumble his way into any genre he saw fit. Much missed.

(Click here to see my original review)

The Pretenders: "Talk of the Town"

3 April 1980

"It takes three plays to pull you towards it and kisses you full on the mouth on the fourth."

— David Hepworth

As far as bands young musicians might want to emulate, one could do a whole lot worse than use The Pretenders as a model. They had a charismatic leader (who also happened to be one of her generation's finest songwriters) backed by a trio of first rate musicians. All four looked cool as well, the sort of rock stars who looked like they were making the most of the experience of a lifetime. They were widely popular, enjoying hits around the world, some of which remain well-remembered to this day. Who wouldn't have wanted to be in The Pretenders? (And, yes, I write this well-aware that two members of this same band would be dead within three years of the release of "Talk of the Town")

The early eighties was the dawn of the video age in pop though it would not be for another two or three years that they would begin to be seen as works of art in their own right. Promos were basic with groups just going through the motions miming to their latest record. Nevertheless, there were enough clues in these vids to get an idea of the bands involved. As a teenager I would look down upon singers who had the temerity to smile in their music videos; I knew that they would never be caught dead grinning like an idiot if they were performing the same song in a concert. Non-singing band members who'd mouth along with the vocals in videos also drew my ire: I can't hear anyone singing in the background so why is Bryan Adams' lead guitarist pretending to be harmonizing with his nibs in the video for "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"? I'm not really even that keen on seeing Bryan doing the singing so why would I ever want to watch a studio musician lip-synch a power ballad?

So, allow me to give my nod of approval to The Pretenders for refusing to stoop to such a level. Chrissie Hynde seldom seems to smile in real life and I don't certainly don't expect her to do so in a video. Her cohorts are a little more willing to mug for the camera but at least its just in an effort to look like goons enjoying their fame rather than in the smug satisfaction that they're not taking the pop star life not quite too seriously. Despite contributing backing vocals to the first two Pretenders albums, James Honeyman-Scot, Pete Farndon and Martin Chambers aren't shown joining in with the group's lead singer. One mouth piece Pretender was more than enough.

And with a vocalist like Chrissie Hynde, who gives a toss if anyone else happens to be singing? Not a conventionally great singer, it would be quite easy to be turned off by the sound of her nasally whine and, indeed, I understand anyone who doesn't care for her voice. But unlike very few in pop, her vocals are multi-dimensional. Confident yet oozing vulnerability. Sensual but not conventionally sexy. Expressive yet reigned in by the limitations of her voice. No, Hynde couldn't sing the phone book: what point would there be in that?

She could also write a decent tune and "Talk of the Town" is one of her better efforts. With many influences going back to at least the sixties, Hynde's forerunners are difficult to pinpoint. Obviously, she loved The Kinks enough to do a pretty good cover of "Stop Your Sobbing" (and, indeed, to wind up in a relationship with Ray Davies) but their sound isn't overly apparent. She owes much more to someone like Elvis Costello — who has admitted a debt to her in turn on "You'll Never Be a Man", even though I've always heard the Get Happy!! cut "Men Called Uncle" as far more Pretender-like — with his intricate word-play and innate sense of melody. Lines like "Who were you then? Who are you now? / Common labourer by night, by day high brow" could easily have been nicked from the Declan McManus songbook, even if she doesn't go out of her way to try to cram a pun in the way he would have done.

Sadly, Hynde's place in the new wave pop revolution has been diminished by lazy rock scholarship that insists on placing her squarely as a female artist. She's typically listed along with the likes of Patti Smyth, Lene Lovitch and Siouxsie Sioux as a leading light of the fearless new woman in rock but this narrative tells only a part of the story. While others entered the male-dominated music industry to provide a female alternative, Hynde has been a woman playing men's rock better than the majority of her male contemporaries. "Talk of the Town" could have been written by Costello or Paul Weller but it happened to be composed by Chrissie Hynde who happens to be a woman who invited herself to a man's world.

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Also Reviewed This Fortnight

Phil Lynott: "Dear Miss Lonelyhearts"

Phil Lynott was always one of the more admirable figures in rock and he remains an Irish national treasure to this day. I'm not a big hard rock guy but I've been charmed by Thin Lizzy records over the years. That all said, I can't muster up much enthusiasm for his debut solo effort. Clearly influenced by the pub rock singer-songwriters like Costello, Ian Dury and Nick Lowe, it's impressive that Lynott decided to go the smart aleck route but the results are much too ordinary for such a unique individual. Perhaps he'd had his fill of combining metal with traditional Irish folk song and that's fair enough but, as David Hepworth suggests, this smacks of a fun little extracurricular activity and he needed to get back to his day job.